Losing the game, but still winning praise

Franklin's Mitch Deffner
makes a catch in front of UW-Whitewater defensive back Noah Timm.
The Grizzlies were shut out but need to regroup for their
conference slate. Photo by Ralph Greenslade for
D3sports.com

FRANKLIN, Ind. – Kneeling in a huddle on
your home field after losing a big game, usually the last person
you want to hear from is the coach who just beat you. But there was
UW-Whitewater’s Lance Leipold, who felt he needed to say a
few words to the Franklin team his Warhawks had just beaten
45-0.

“You guys are a class act,”
Leipold told the Grizzlies under the overcast sky at Faught
Stadium. “You kept playing hard to the end. Your coaches kept
coaching to end. You are going to be a very good football
team.”

Despite the big loss, Franklin seemed to have
won a fan in Leipold. As the Grizzlies, the defending Heartland
Collegiate Athletic Conference champs, starts to defend its title
this Saturday at Bluffton, Franklin will try to put away the pain
of the losing to the nation’s No. 1-ranked team.

“It hurts in a lot of respects,”
said Franklin coach Mike Leonard, whose team lost to the Warhawks
52-21 in the playoffs last year. “I really wanted to give a
great game to these guys. I had visions of victory. I give them all
the credit in the world. They are so strong in every area.
We’re still walking off the field with our heads held high,
but it did shoot our confidence just a little bit.”

Franklin caught a UW-Whitewater in sort of a
search for itself. The two-time defending champions won 26-7 to
UW-La Crosse a week earlier. A good win, but after settling for
four field goals in the game, it wasn’t UW-Whitewater-like.
The Warhawks wanted to use this game to right the ship. That
probably spelled bad news for Franklin before the game even
started.

“We needed to take a step forward
today,” Leipold said. “We played okay in the opener,
but if we want to be the team I think we can be, we needed to take
that next step and I think we were able to do that.”

For Franklin, the game doesn’t affect
its favorite status going into HCAC play, but some may believe with
the score that maybe the Grizzlies are vunerable. Franklin
linebacker and captain David O’Rourke said opponents who
believe that do so at their own peril.

Mike Leonard signed his team
up for the toughest challenge in Division III, but it could pay
off.
Photo by Ralph Greenslade for D3sports.com

“I wish someone would look at us like
that,” O’Rourke said. “It would be nice if
someone did underestimate us. We’re going to prepare for our
next game as much as we did for this game or any other. We
aren’t going to take any teams lightly, especially after a
loss like this. Hopefully teams will look at us as vunerable and
we’ll come out on top.”

But how does one shake off a 45-0 loss that
most of the Division III football world was watching closely? One
game at a time.

“Nobody in the country is better than
they are,” Leonard said. “I think we’ll have our
confidence again and we’ll attack our next opponent. We have
eight conference games, so we start up again 0-0. If we make the
playoffs, we need to know what kind of team we’ll be playing
and nobody’s going to better than them.”

Team captain and split end Mitch Deffner said,
though, the memory of the UW-Whitewater game has become just that
– a memory – for the Grizzlies to move on. He said
getting back into the playoffs should be best way for Franklin to
redeem itself.

“It’s never fun to lose,
especially the way we did,” said Deffner, who was knocked out
of the game with a knee injury. “We can’t be too down
on the loss. We just shot ourselves in the foot too much. We always
have motivation. Conference is the thing that will get us in the
playoffs. If that’s not enough motivation, I don’t know
what is. We will get over this pretty quick because conference is
what counts.”

Leonard said the first order of business will
be to make sure his team thinks positively and get on a roll
quickly when they face Bluffton.

“Good teams don’t let a bad thing
turn into the next bad thing and then the next bad thing,”
Leonard said. “I can tell you I’ve got a chain of
events of bad things that happened in the second quarter. What I
was telling our players that the chain happens on the other end as
well when good things start to happen. You can’t let one bad
thing affect the next play.

“Offensively, we want to run the
football in a way that matching our passing game. Defensively, we
have to stop the pass. I think we’re good enough up front to
stop the run.”

As UW-Whitewater took its next step against
Franklin, the Grizzlies will now have the opportunity to do the
same.

Stretching the field No.15 North Central responded to its opening season loss
by returning home and hammering NAIA foe Bethel (Tenn.) 70-26. The
70 points was, though, only the fifth highest scoring total in
school history. The Cardinals were aided by a 35-point second
quarter to give them a 49-10 lead at halftime. Running back Ryan
Kent rushed for 176 yards on nine carries, including a 75-yard
touchdown in the fourth quarter.

"I think the fans really enjoyed watching this
one tonight," said the Cardinals' head coach, John Thorne. "The
first quarter, out in California, we played really well, but for
whatever reason we started having too many mistakes and mental
errors, but that happens a lot of times in the first game.

"We have to keep experimenting with different players and
different schemes to make sure that by the time we start playing
conference games we'll really know what team we have. I was really
proud of them tonight."

Big yards Wheaton’s Teddy Watkins collected 322 all-purpose
yards in the Thunder’s 54-34 victory over Albion. That total
included 136 receiving yards on nine catches. Senior Garrett Meador
threw for six touchdowns in the game, which would have made him
popular in Division III fantasy football.

100 wins St. Norbert’s Jim Purtill won his
100th Midwest Conference game over 13 years when his Green
Knights beat Beloit 30-14. Since 1999, Purtill has compiled an
impressive 100-8 record.

Back on track Monmouth quarterback Alex Tanney seems to be back on
track with a 355-yard performance in a 61-20 victory over Grinnell.
Tanney completed 21 of 28 passes and threw for four touchdowns.
Wide receiver Mike Blodgett had eight of those catches for 164
yards, including a 634-yarder less than a minute into the game.
Trey Yocum benefitted from the air show, to rush for 165 yards.

Game of the Week UW-Platteville at No. 8 Wheaton: Granted, UW-Platteville
was expected to only be a middle of the road WIAC team, but when
you play in arguably the best Division III conference in the
country, it’s always interesting to see how that experience
will help against a top 10 team. In short, Wheaton won’t be
able to throw anything at Platteville that they haven’t seen
before. Plus, Platteville went to UW-Stevens Point and dominated
the formerly 23rd-ranked Pointers.

Also . . .

No. 19 Wittenberg at Washington
U.: Washington U. is off to a 2-0 start, but Wittenberg
will easily be its biggest test. This could be an interesting
contest.

What’s happening out there? I’m always looking for unique stories for my
Midwest column. What do I mean? Something that is a slice of life
to the football season and what makes Division III football unique.
For example, when I arrived at Faught Stadium in Franklin on
Saturday, I was greeted at the gate by one of the assistant
coaches, who personal took me through the stadium to the Franklin
Touchdown Club, where I had the best tailgate meal in the last
several years. Now, I’ve been to quite a few tailgates in my
time at some awfully big schools, but this was absolutely one of
the best. Do you think your school as a good tailgate experience?
Tell me about it.

A couple of years ago, I got a tip where a
player proposed to his cheerleader girlfriend during a homecoming
pep rally. Little things like that makes Division III part of
memories that will last a lifetime. Drop me an
email and let’s hear your story.

Clyde Hughes has been writing sports at various times over the past 24 years, covering everything from high school, college and sporting events. A native of football-crazed Texas, Hughes works in Indiana and has written for numerous newspapers and magazines.2003-04 columnist: John Regenfuss